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TIIE CITIZEN AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 



HOLLISTON, MASS., 



DAY OF THE ANNUAL STATE FAST, 



APRIL 10, 1851 



BY J. T. TUCKER, 

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 



First pure, then peaceable, gentle. — James 3 : 17. 



HOLLISTON : 

PUBLISHED AND FOB SALE BY 

PARKER & PLIMPTON 
185 1. 






If there should seem to be a want of modesty in the publication of this pam- 
phlet, the Author would suggest, in extenuation, that, having given expression 
to his sentiments upon a topic just now furnishing matter of much exciting 
conversation and discussion in the community, he felt it to be no more than due 
to himself to place these opinions beyond the liability of misconstruction and 
misrepresentation. The Discourse is, therefore, given as spoken. It is sent out 
" upon its perilous way" not without a hope, moreover, that to not a few, it 
will commend itself as a word of "soberness and truth,"— a quickener of right 
feelings, and a strengthener of right resolves. 



DISCOURSE. 



Job 32. 10. — " I also will show mine opinion. 



In difficult crises of public affairs, it is commonly expected 
that those, whose sentiments are regarded as a kind of public 
property, will define, with some formality, their position. 
When this might be supposed to be already understood, by not 
infrequent general allusions to exciting questions, and inci- 
dental discussions of their bearings, this demand, it would 
seem, might be considered as sufficiently met. Nevertheless, 
such more concise notices of prominent, social and national 
concerns are found not altogether to suffice. Accordingly, 
though, since the passage of those legislative acts at the 
Capital of this Republic, which have stirred so profoundly the 
indignation of our land, this pulpit has repeatedly uttered its 
voice not indistinctly upon this subject and others collateral 
thereto: yet, as I have not devoted an entire discourse to 
these matters, I have thought it advisable so to do, in con- 
nection with the return of this Anniversary of Humiliation. 
Fasting, and Prayer. Understand me not, however, as inti- 
mating that, what I am now to say would not, in my 
regard, be wholly appropriate to any day on which God is 
worshipped and his truth is uttered. I have no excessive 
scrupulosity concerning the enforcement, at any time, of senti- 
ments which look to the regulation of human affairs, upon any 
scale, by the rule of Christ's Gospel of equity and love. To 
be sure, I have not reached that point of liberalism, avowed 
by a contemporary, which is ready to take a text from the 
telegraph. Hut Christian doctrine upon things earthly as 



4 

well as heavenly, as sanctioned by the inspiration of these 
revelations of God, may find ever and everywhere its fitting 
home. Being very desirous to address, in this discussion, the 
sober considerateness of those who may hear me, to carry your 
convictions of what is right, rather than to arouse merely your 
indignation, which is a far easier task, I have purposely 
deferred the undertaking now in hand, until time enough 
should have elapsed to enable us all to survey and canvass an 
exceedingly perplexed and irritating theme, with a calm, a 
discriminating, a judicious intelligence. 

Passing, then, these preliminaries, I purpose now to show 
more at length, my opinion and its reasons, respecting our 
relations as citizens to laws and law-makers, as this question 
has been freshly started upon us by the recent slave-legislation 
of Congress, and its unfortunate results in our own near 
vicinity. 

I commence with a position which I shall assume to need 
no defense — that God is of right the Supreme Law-giver over 
all orders of accountable beings. Consequently no inferior 
legislation can innocently conflict with his will, where this is 
clearly, explicitly announced. 

A second truth I hold in this connection to be, that Civil 
Government is a divinely authorized institution ; that civil 
law carries with it, in its legitimate sphere and operations, a 
divine sanction ; that civil officers, under the like limitations, 
are God's ministers of control to protect and to punish. This 
is placing the social organization on a widely different basis 
from the doctrine so popular with many, that a community 
associated under civil government is only the product of the 
free relinquishment by its members of certain rights and privi- 
leges of an independent state of existence, in consideration of 
certain other advantages accruing from this corporate relation- 
ship. The fact is, that no such giving-up of individual preten- 
sions, and contracting together for mutual defense and well- 
being, is traceable in the development of man's history. It is 
all a chimera of a particular school of political theorists. 
The institutions of the Commonwealth, under some form of 



recognized law and government, are as original and necessary 
a part of human wants as are those of the Family. It is not 
merely human ingenuity and skill which has been at work in 
setting up the forms of legislative and judicial power. There 
is more here, and from the beginning, has been, than simply the 
consenting of portions of our race to live with each other 
under common rules of conduct, rather than to live apart in 
savage isolation. Even the savage world, indeed, has its rude 
elements of subordination and control. In short, government 
by law enacted and administered by the accredited functionaries 
of the State, whatever be the name of that government, comes 
from ihe appointment of the Creator's will, and through the 
ordering of his Providence. It occupies here as high a level as 
does the Domestic relationship. The State is as indispensable 
to human welfare as is the Home. Neither can exist in its 
just development without the other. If anything further be 
needful to substantiate this position, hear the word of God : — 
" Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers : — the pow- 
ers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth 
the power resisteth the ordinance of God. For, for this cause 
pay ye tribute also ; for they are God's ministers attending con- 
tinually upon this very thing." 1 So Christ himself met the 
claim of Caesar, in the matter of supporting civil government, 
making it a Christian duty to render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's, as well as unto God the things that are God's. 2 

We mark, here, I say, the declared pleasure and providential 
arranging of Him, who is not the author of confusion but of 
order. Government, in the first stages of human society, was 



'Rom.: 13. 

2 Mat.: 17: 24 — 27. So the Fathers generally, and most commentators, ex- 
plain. 15ut, if this tribute was paid as a Hebrew Theocratic tax, as Trench on 
the Miracles, pp. 299-sq, and Neander, Life of Christ, p. 290, maintain, it docs 
not vary the force of the evidence which the passage furnishes to my position 
that it is a Christian obligation to support the national government whose pro- 
tection we enjoy. The Theocracy was a political no less than a religious 
establishment. 



only the expanding over a tribe of the family constitution, un- 
der the headship of the patriarch, in whom the father was easily 
merged into the chieftain. And from that simplest mode of 
law-making and law-executing, to the most complex of its 
succeeding types, we recognize the general principle of obedi- 
ence to the established authority of a land as meeting the 
scope of the Apostolic injunction — " Put them in mind to be 
subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be 
ready to every good work." ' 

In thus grounding the obligation of obedience to civil gov- 
ernment in something higher than a business contract between 
the several parties of the State, I have not forgotten my first 
affirmation — that God's legislation is paramount to all else ; 
neither have I taken an attitude at all contradictory thereto, by 
any fair interpretation of these premises. Contrariwise, I 
would bring the pre-eminent authority of God to bear directly 
upon this very point, and urge a reverence and a love for the 
institutions which watch over and guard our rights and welfare 
as citizens, because God has enjoined it. I would thus elevate 
the sentiment of patriotism from the low impulses of a narrow, 
selfish, jealous pride of country, into a deep and trusting devo- 
tion of soul to the privileges of public security and prosperity 
which God has made our birthright ; and which we cherish 
because in them we see and appreciate God's abounding good- 
ness ; — a patriotism which thus taking God within the circle of 
its motives, will be slow to carry its allegiance to human de- 
mands, however imposing, into any collision with claims of 
duty which are manifestly Divine. 

Here, as everywhere else, there can be no opposition 
between things which ought to be. " As surely as the mind 
is one, the truth to which the mind is preconfigured is one." 2 
Duties exist in an universal harmony. This we must bear in 
thought, as we look now a little to this point of chief per- 
plexity — where are the limits, at which obedience to human 
statutes, in general commanded by God, becomes displeasing to 



1 Tit.: 3—1 ; also, 1st Pet.: 2—13. 

2 Harris' Prc-adamitc Earth, p. 10. 



Him, by reason of a conflict with his own contrary require- 
ments ? 

To such opposing attitudes there is a liability, because, 
though God has instituted human government, he has not seen 
fit to make its keepers infallible. The Christian Church is a 
yet more sacred institution of His own. But this, too, is not 
preserved from error and from wrong, by a continual exertion 
of miraculous agencies. These it would demand in either 
case, to assure an uninterrupted succession of perfect decisions. 
What, then, must decide these questions of alledged collision 
between God's will which is supreme, and the working of 
subordinate organizations, by Him authorized for beneficial 
purposes, yet left to the freedom of their own determinations ? 

I answer, without hesitation, that the same tribunal must 
take cognizance of these cases, to which, by the cardinal doc- 
trine of our Protestant Christianity, we claim to submit, with-. 
out appeal, the still holier interests of our personal, religious 
faith and practice. Open to abuse as may be this declaration, 
nevertheless a man's individual conscience, his internal sense 
of right and wrong, must settle for himself his conduct. 1 But 
mark this, as necessarily vital to the rectitude and safety of the 
decisions of conscience — that only as it is enlightened by 
God's revealed truth, and guided by God's Spirit, is it qualified 
to sit on this throne of judgment ; to say what is, or is not, 
accordant or hostile to the requirements of heaven. 

That is to say, there is nothing more deceptive than the 
promptings of this faculty in man, when left to the influences 
of depravity and spiritual ignorance r A perverted sincerity, 
a conscientious tenacity in error, is one of the most dangerous 
foes of society. A conscience warped by prejudice, inflamed 

1 One of the finest, moral spectacles in the History of the Reformation, is the 
firmness with -which Luther held fast this main pillar of his work, when 
Munzcr and the Zwickaw Prophets were running this doctrine of "private 
judgment " into the most errant fanaticism. — See Sears' Luther, pp. 329. sq. 

"We find it quite impossible to abandon this ancient entrenchment of freedom 
and virtue, notwithstanding the late labors of learned jurists and leading editors 
to establish the supremacy of a state-conscience, and the duty of unconditional 
obedience to the rule of the majority, though expressed by law. 



8 

by animosity or partizan zeal, may drive forward the work of 
devils with eagerness. When, therefore, a seeming antago- 
nism breaks forth between the laws which men enact and those 
of God, conscience is not to be lightly, carelessly, passionately 
invoked to adjudicate the issue. While the principle is indis- 
putable — " We ought to obey God rather than man " — it may 
not be altogether certain, at a glance, whether what we regard 
as a conflict between the two is, indeed, such a conflict. This 
is the very thing to be discovered, not to be taken for granted. 
Do we appeal to conscience? Then, let not some mere im- 
pulse of excited feeling, some ebullition of anger or wilful 
predeliction, or even some prompting of deeply-moved sym- 
pathy, step into its holy seat. Do we appeal to conscience ? 
Then, let it be a conscience, not blindfolded and manacled by 
any wrong bias or alliance ; but one which takes God's 
statutes and the teachings of those whom God inspired for its 
authoritative instructions ; one which habitually strives, in all 
things, to make its decisions an echo of heaven's. When an 
individual is satisfied that he has sat in judgment on a claim of 
civil law in this temper ; that in a spirit of prayerful ness, not 
of passionateness or irreverence, he has sought truly to know 
God's pleasure, by a fair investigation and comparison of the 
sacred text, and by a proper use of other practicable means of 
right information ; if then he cannot endorse that statute, he 
must set it aside on his responsibility, and a fearfully solemn 
one it is, to God and to his country. And such a decision will 
command respect. But it is a spectacle far from deserving this 
tribute, when, upon any transient cause of excitement, men 
begin of a sudden to talk largely and loudly about what their 
consciences will, or will not allow them to do ; who, very 
possibly, may have given for a long time scarce any proof, to 
themselves or their neighbors, that they possessed any con- 
science at all. A violent manifestation of zeal for God's and 
the Bible's authority on the part of such persons is, to say the 
.least, rather an inconsistency. A fair offset to which, on the 
reverse extreme, we have in the excessive law-abidingness, just 
•jiow, of sections of our Republic, which at other times have 



paid as little respect to the decrees of Constitution and 
Congress, as the Leviathan that " esteemeth iron as straw and 
brass as rotten wood." 

It is competent, then, for conscience,— and I am now using 
the term in its popular sense as embracing our faculty of 
judging as well as feeling rightly, though strictly it ap- 
plies only to the latter, — -it is competent for conscience to 
pronounce upon and to discard, under the legitimate conditions 
of its exercise, enactments of civil government as contrary to 
the obedience due to a superior power. Clear cases of its 
jurisdiction were these — -when by the Babylonish court Daniel 
was forbidden to pray to God ; when, also, by the Jewish 
Council, the Apostles were forbidden to preach the Gospel of 
Christ. Manifest interferences like these with the Divine will 
are easily disposed of. But much the larger proportion of 
questions, involving this issue, which require our attention, 
are not resolvable by this simple and satisfactory process, 
though at first view they may so appear. 

To come to the topic which has given new and engrossing 
interest to these general truths, let us inquire, how the late 
law of our government for the re-capture of Fugitive Slaves 
bears upon our duty of allegiance to the authority of the 
nation of which we constitute a part ? The problem is practi- 
cally this, — -through the headlands and islands of God's, and 
our country's, and humanity's claims upon us, to find, not to 
make, a channel, which will take us. and any poor Fugitive 
we may happen to have on board, safely out upon the wide 
sea of religious and civil duty ; without striking our keel 
either on the reefs of treason to the State, or of rebellion against 
heaven. 

If it could be shown that God has forbidden the reclamation 
of a servant flying from his master, under all circumstances, as 
He has forbidden idolatry, profane swearing, or murder, then 
the case is decided beyond appeal ; and this late Congressional 
law must take its place alongside of the king of Babylon's 
edict against Jehovah's worship, which Daniel positively with- 
stood, even at the open door of the lion's den. While I have 



10 

no sympathy with this act of our legislators, I must neverthe- 
less say that I find no such direct countermand of it in the 
Bible as must compel a Christian man, under his loyalty to 
God, to wage an outright hostility against it. The only text, 
for which this explicitness of countermand is claimed, is in 
Deut: 23. 15. But this can hardly carry an unconditional 
restrictive authority upon all cases and at all times, since it is 
surely possible that the interpretation may be correct, by which 
the great majority of commentators restrict it specifically to 
the intercourse of the Hebrew tribes with their Pagan neigh- 
bors, — finding its local cause in the moral wrongfulness of 
remanding these escaped slaves to the superstitions and 
viciousness of heathenism. It is not necessary to my purpose 
to attempt to make good this exposition. If it very probably 
may be true, then this enactment by Moses cannot so cover 
the case of Fugitives under this law of ours, as to put the 
whole question of our treatment of it beyond dispute. 

The subject passes, consequently, out of the narrower cir- 
cle of positive Divine command — thou shalt, or shall not, do 
this individual thing — into the wide and much less easily 
surveyed field of inferential obligation. We are driven upon 
general principles, the difficulty of managing which is con- 
spicuously illustrated by the fact that they are sweeping our 
gravest and most conscientious writers to the most opposite and 
irreconcilable results. We eschew both extremes ; — on the one 
hand, that servile holding of the doctrine of obedience to civil 
government, that absorption of every human interest in zeal for 
" the Union," which accepts this ordinance of recapture as in- 
trinsically good or politically necessary, and demands that it lie 
unchallenged, undisturbed, beside the parent evil from which 
it has sprung ; and on the other side, we deprecate that spirit 
of antagonism which contents itself with nothing milder than 
leveling open and downright resistance thereto, even to the 
arming of both the fugitive and the citizen against the officer 
who may be charged with its enforcement. The true point of 
rest lies, doubtless, between these antipodes, perplexing, as it 
may be, to map down its exact parallel of latitude. 



11 

The Fugitive Slave Act has some peculiar features of odious 
inhumanity. Its specifications go beyond the ordinary offen- 
siveness of this vicious institution. It forces the slave-system 
more obnoxiously under our notice than before ; changes its 
arena from a far-off Southern region to our own doors, and 
assumes to claim our compelled participation in its mainten- 
ance. It is the relapsed stage, to its unfortunate victim, of a 
long and wasting distemper. All this is excessively provocative 
of regret and indignation among freemen. But aside from 
these superficial aggravations, I know not that its spirit is more 
intrinsically bad than is that of its progenitor, or that it would, 
if carried out fully, make the North more essentially a party to 
the " Southern institution," than the North has been since the 
organization of our federation. If it be branded as unconstitu- 
tional, and therefore a nullity, I suppose the sound doctrine to 
be that such a question has its proper issue in an examination 
and reversal by the Supreme Court of the nation, and not in 
nullification, either by a State or a citizen. The drift of these 
observations is this — that if, under our solemnly reiterated 
protests against slavery, we have consented to dwell loyally 
in this league of States thus long, being willing to wait the 
issue of events in hope of the termination of this great public 
wrong ; if its infecting bur Constitution itself, and much of 
our by-gone legislation, with its virus, has not been a reason to 
justify us in casting off the general government, in organizing 
means for withstanding its jurisdiction, I see not how such 
justification can be found in the adventitious aggravations of 
this special Bill. I am at a loss to discover how it is to sanction 
that positive disobedience to government which all the foregone 
violences of slavery have not been held to sanction. Am I 
wrong in suspecting that the state of feeling which is just now 
putting to so great a discount among us at the North, the value 
of the Union of these thirty Commonwealths, is assignable 
much more to some side-thrusts of exasperating bravado in this 
Act of Congress, than to any clearly defined advance in it of 
wrong principles, over and above that of its prototype, so 
long enthroned in authority as an original provision of our 
Constitution itself. 



12 

Yet must I vindicate the memory of those good men and true. 
Who framed that compact of these States, from any voluntary 
participation before the fact, in the subsequent and present ex- 
tension of the slave-system. In a dark and stormy time, when 
our ship of state was tossed upon a raging sea, they consented 
to the recognition of that institution which they loved not, 
with the expresed hope and belief in many contemporansous 
documents, that it would soon die out and close its own career, 
amid the counteracting influences of surrounding freedom. 
They designed only to give time to that to come to a natural 
dissolution, in which they thought they surely saw the germ of 
fatal disease. That what they thus laid out for a speedy burial 
has started up into a new and gigantic life, is chargeable to the 
moral and political unfaithfulness of men who have entered into 
the legislative trusts of the fathers of this Republic, whether 
Northern or Southern, without their thorough devotion to the 
interests of liberty and humanity : who have suffered the low 
spirit of trade, and finance, and political bargaining, and national 
ambition, to debauch their consciences, to purchase over their 
integrity, with many a gilded lure, to the establishing of this 
injustice on firmer and broader foundations. And here, where 
the Free States of our Union have always had the power of 
control, had they but acted in unison, are they to be justly 
charged with the chief responsibility of this swerving from 
truth and righteousness. 

This state of affairs, thus reaching its present matured enor- 
mity through the remissness of Northern public sentiment and 
action, a remissness as conspicuous in the enactment of this 
last law of recapture, as in any other claim of Slavery, is not, 
I therefore hold, a valid basis on which to work the lever of 
national disorganization. No man can conscientiously put his 
hand to that lever who has by his default, or partizan zeal, or 
any neglect of duty, aided in making legislators of men, who 
have in turn aided in the perpetuating and strengthening 
of Slavery on our soil. How many are wholly innocent upon 
this count ? I further maintain, that when tyranny is enforced 
upon a people by wholly extraneous power, the true decision 



13 

lies between submission and revolution. The latter is the just 
resort of a people when laws become so intolerable or so iniqui- 
tous, that to subvert an existing government is a less evil than 
to uphold it. And they who set forward upon the enterprise of 
breaking down the government under which they live, ought 
first to have carefully studied and wisely settled the preliminary 
inquiry — whether a revolution of the State, be the next duty ? 
Has it arrived at this amongst us, that it is really of no further 
use to work the problem whether Liberty and Union, in their 
widest extension, may not dwell together between these oceans? 

But, while this act of Congress is not a text from which to 
preach the overthrow of our government, it has its fitting uses. 
It may and should open the eyes of men to a clearer compre- 
hension of the true nature of the institution which has be- 
gotten it. It furnishes a new and powerful argument, by 
which to press in a firm yet temperate spirit, the abrogation as 
speedily as possible, of that whole system. Particularly should 
its offensive presence evoke an overwhelming demand for its 
revocation, and pledge every voter among us to the absolutely 
indispensable work of freeing our ballot-boxes, and our 
caucus-rooms of the names of men, as candidates for our 
legislators, who will either concoct or vote for such op- 
pressive laws, or absent themselves from their posts while 
others do it for them. If more of painstaking were expended 
in making honest and true men rulers, we should have far less 
of indignation to exhaust upon laws which set backward the 
progress of Christian reform. 

In connection with the views now exhibited, I wish to set 
forth prominently another position, without which they may 
carry to some a wrong impression. I have strongly advocated a 
respect for the authority and the functions of civil government, 
as a divinely sanctioned bond and guardian of society. I have 
also asserted God's paramount claims to obedience ; and the 
inviolability of individual conscience. But a further point I 
hold as harmonious with the preceding, and in fact made ne- 
cessary by them. When a law is enacted, as this, for example, 
under review, which conscience under its best enlightenment 



14 

repudiates as wrong, then is it a perfectly right, and lawful, 
and unharmful course of personal procedure, for every man 
to keep himself aloof from aiding its execution however 
summoned thereto. To take the stand of overt hostility to its 
enforcement by others, whether by bloody or bloodless means, 
is one thing, and, to my judgment, wholly a wrong thing. 
But to fall back upon my own choice of inaction in the prem- 
ises, is an entirely different thing. No stringency of com- 
mand should induce me to lift a finger or move a muscle to 
help that law to its accomplishment. Others must do as they 
please on their own responsibility. I have an equal right to 
do nothing, if to act is to abuse my inner light, and, if need 
be, to suffer the legal penalties. This is a Christian position. 
I do not thus resist government, or bring it voluntarily into 
contempt. Law has two parts — precept and punishment. If I 
cannot honor it by compliance with the former, I must by sub- 
mitting to the exactions of the latter. It can go on and de- 
mand its retribution at my expense, not for an active resistance, 
but for a passive protest against its unrighteous movements ; 
while, by submitting thereto, I honor God and my religion, 
and the civil rule providentially extended over me. I neither 
thus deserve the name of a turbulent or a refractory citizen, 
nor do I thus impede, but vastly aid, the removal of all such 
statutes as good men cannot actively and cheerfully obey. In 
the best meaning of that phrase, this is a "masterly inac- 
tivity." 

There is yet another point which I must briefly touch — the 
bearing of this law upon our treatment of the Fugitive who 
may seek our succor. It cannot be questioned that we should 
extend to him all the offices of kindness and hospitality in our 
power- He is our brother-man. We recognize no mark of 
ownership on him, but God's. We are to take for granted that 
he is what he ought to be — a freeman. We are at liberty to 
meet whatever claims of sympathy he brings as a distressed 
and needy fellow-being, short of a collision with the duly 
certified jurisdiction of the government. In the absence of its 
fully and strictly proven title to interfere, we are under no 



15 

bonds to know anything prejudicial to the man who asks our 
charity, our friendly aid. If, however, the government 
demands him from our hospitality, it must, with its victim, take 
also all further responsibility of the case and its consequences. 
So, too, would we not counsel resistance in the Fugitive, hard 
as his lot may be. For him, even, it were better to retake 
that bitter cup of suffering, than to take the sword of vio- 
lence. Is it said that Government disowns him, and therefore 
he may fall back on his original rights of self-protection ? 
Government no more disowns him under this law which would 
recapture him as a Fugitive, than it did under that former law 
which made him a slave. The disowning, if anywhere, is at 
that prior stage. And if now he may level his weapon, and 
kill the officer who would rebind him to bondage, so might he 
as rightly have killed the master who held him before, or the 
auctioneer who sold him to that master. But surely ere we 
can reach this hostile attitude, we must go infinitely wide both 
from the spirit and precepts of Christianity. Nor will it justify 
this departure to show the same, or a far greater, divergence 
therefrom, on the part of the slave-system of our country, and 
this its worthy progeny. 

Much as it imposes a painful restraint on many feelings and 
impulses easily wrought into excitement, I nevertheless am 
constrained to appear before you as a counsellor of sub- 
mission and sufferance both on the part of the citizen and the 
oppressed, if the only alternative be this, or active antagonism 
to the execution of duly enacted law. No good cause can 
profit aught by mob-violence. The recent affray in our 
metropolis has liberated, perhaps, one sufferer ; but it has 
riveted to new tightness the fetters of thousands, and sprung 
into intcnseness a reactionary sentiment of morbid enthusiasm 
for tilings as they arc, directly prejudicial to the advance of 
general emancipation. Alas, that this cause has had so often 
reason to exclaim — "Deliver me from my friends ! " It can 
avail nothing by such demonstrations, only as God may over- 
rule them for ultimate success. But, as earnestly would I 
exhort to the steady, persevering appliance of every peaceful 



16 

instrumentality to rid our land of the whole system of slavery. 
There is labor here for all who can pray, — who can speak the 
truth in love, 1 — who can wield the influence of a Christian, 
of a citizen, in a land which has no earthly rulers but its own 
electors. May God restrain evil passions, and send down upon 
our people and our legislators the spirit of wisdom, of equity, 
and of love, to bring this complicated and mischievous busi- 
ness to safe and righteous issues. We need, in every section 
of this nation, His guidance and His grace. Our vessel of 
state, strained in every joint on this rocking sea, will founder 
in deep water, if Divine mercy brings her not to a safe harbor. 
Would to God, that this entire Republiccould humble itself in 
that deep humiliation and fasting of soul, which should beget 
a repentance of this and every sin. that needeth not to be 
repented of! Then should we keep an acceptable fast to the 
Lord, and his indignation should turn itself away from us. 



1 Is this done, by assorting with one of our most venerable Divines, that " for a 
man to be a Fugitive Slave is prima facie proof that he is a badman :" or, on the 
other hand, by affirming, that "to retake a Fugitive to Southern bondage is to put 
him more hopelessly beyond the reach of Gospel Salvation, than if he were in 
the heart of Hindostan r" Can our Evangelical pulpits wield their proper power 
over this evil, while they give currency to such exaggerations ? 



54 Nf 








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